Valorant’s first beta patch nerfs Raze, changes Sage

As the Valorant closed beta continues, the upcoming FPS game’s now got its very first patch. As developer Riot Games highlights, it’s a “short and sweet” update offering just a handful of tweaks and tinkerings to the online multiplayer game’s agents, balance, and maps, as well as some quality of live changes and bug fixes. However, there are some pretty significant updates to two of its key characters – Raze and Sage.

In the first set of Valorant patch notes (posted here by Riot), the dev talks changes to duelist type agent : “Raze is lethal, no doubt, and we predict savvy players will perform better against her over time. Still, we made some light changes that should bring Raze’s offensive pressure closer to the other agents.”

In addition, the studio outlines its buff to melee characters, explaining it wants to give players in the early game “a better way to deal with Sage’s Barrier Orb”, but also still keeping it “a calculated risk” for players to take. “Don’t worry Sage mains, your Slow Orb now slows those bunny hoppers, too,” Riot adds.

Oh, and the dev’s also “booting the phrase ‘camera-gun’ back to English spy films where it belongs.” You know, following that hilarious Cypher camera bug that popped up recently.

Read on the check out the first round of Valorant 0.47+ beta patch notes in full below (via Riot):

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

MELEE DAMAGE

Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, including:

Sage’s Barrier

Haven’s metal double doors

Why?

There weren’t enough options during low econ rounds—such as the first round and right after switching sides—to combat Sage’s Barrier Orb. Our intent is to add a high-risk, high-reward method for players to interact with her wall, while still being able to take it down, no matter their loadout

RAZE

Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1

Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh cooldown

Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios

Fixed an edge case where the secondary cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.

What’s up with that?

Raze’s goal is to be a highly-threatening duelist that punishes enemies posted in predictable positions, but we felt like the cluster grenades and their number were creating overly oppressive scenarios.

Also, players should be supplied proper gameplay information and the audio cues on all of Raze’s abilities didn’t match their threat, so we changed the audio of each. For example, when the Showstopper is equipped or fired from a distance, players should be able to clearly identify and interpret the threat.

SAGE

Slow Orb now also slows the air speed of players in the zone

Players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise

Why though?

Players were able to circumvent too much of Sage’s Slow Orb by bunny hopping through the zone. We want the minimum slow amount to be a bit more consistent with all movement in the zone, while still allowing for bunny hopping and walking to provide a slight benefit to traversing the zone.

Also, we feel adding a stealthy yet slow way to move through the field brings more nuance to playing against the zone and a bit more uncertainty for Sage, since she can’t necessarily hear people who move through

MAP UPDATES

Several exploits fixed on Bind, Haven, and Split

Split: Orb moved from B Mid to B Main

The intent is to alleviate some pressure from mid and provide more incentive for players to control B Main.

QUALITY OF LIFE

Reduced outbound network traffic from client for players running at high frames-per-second

Some ISPs and network setups were throttling game traffic, impacting gameplay by causing large spikes in network latency as FPS increased.

No impact to gameplay / responsiveness

BUG FIXES

Fixed a rare server crash caused by packets occasionally being corrupted by some players’ networks

Cypher’s Spycam can no longer use weapons

Fixed a bug where footstep audible range would sometimes not appear on the minimap

Carrie cut her gaming teeth on the early Tomb Raiders and a lot of Worms 2, but has since developed slightly wider interests. An avid lover of cats, coffee, and Fable, she is desperately awaiting news of Fable 4.